The Taxidermist's Lover - Polly Hall

 Wow. Just wow.  This might just be my favorite read of the year.

 This book follows about a year in the life of  Scarlett and Henry. Henry is a taxidermist living in rural South West England who meets Scarlett one day on the beach.  Scarlett is much younger than him (at one point it was mentioned she was half his age but she is very much an adult), and the two have an instant connection.  Their relationship is passionate, loving, and pretty weird but the two seem to compliment each other perfectly.  Throughout the year, Scarlett learns more about Henry's taxidermy creations as well as his rival, Felix. The two make a promise to be soulmates for all eternity and that promise has far-reaching consequences that neither character could foresee. 

This book is categorized as horror and literary fiction which I think are the most fitting genre categories.  It is a hauntingly beautiful read and a very, very slow burn on the horror side.  The narrative style is from Scarlett's point of view talking to Henry which also feels like she's talking to the reader.  For example, the first line in the book is "Do you remember January as I do?" which was a bit more personal than I was expecting because not many books have their whole narrative using 'you'.  I quickly got used to it, but I found that this choice enabled me to get sucked right back into the book after having to put it down. This, in hand, really amped up the horror for me because I felt much more ingrained in the story than a regular 3rd person point of view - even though I know that Scarlett is talking to Henry and not me.  The overall prose was beautiful to read.  Hall's descriptions were very detailed and had some really interesting word choices.  The prose was where the literary fiction part really shined for me.  I usually don't vibe with literary fiction and find it to be very showy and boring but I think the fact that this beautiful prose was being used to describe such weird and horrific things really won me over.  I've seen in some reviews people comparing this book to Frankenstein, which I can see.  However, it really reminded me of The Yellow Wallpaper with the vivid descriptions that slowly get more and more disturbing as the narrative continues.  I read The Yellow Wallpaper in 2005 for my freshman English class so to have this book flash me back to that story fifteen years later was pretty cool.  I haven't read Catherine House, but from what I've been hearing about it, that also might be a somewhat similar vibe.

Where I think this book might lose some readers is the sort of lack of plot.  I primarily read thrillers, romance, and sci-fi, most of which are very plot heavy.  However, I would categorize myself as a character-driven reader and I think that's why I didn't mind that there wasn't too much going on plot-wise in this book.  Like I said earlier, the whole book takes place over the course of a year in the lives of Scarlett and Henry and most chapters are just them going about their daily business.  The real driving force behind the story is Scarlett and her feelings about Henry's taxidermy but that is a pretty gradual change.  There's one big moment at about the 85% mark where I had to go back and re-read what happened because even that big plot point was sort of hidden in this very languid narrative.  When I realized what had happened and what was about to happen, I was absolutely floored.  There were aspects and characters that got brought up in the course of the book that I wish got a little more explored like Henry's rivalry with Felix, but that is really based more on just my own curiosity more so than anything else.  Looking back, this book was written really tightly and had a lot of things happen but as I was reading, it didn't feel like a whole lot was going on outside of Scarlett's own mind.  I think some readers will get frustrated by Scarlett having questions about certain people or certain situations and she will just drop them when Henry doesn't want to talk about them.  

The horror elements in this book were perfectly done for my tastes.  It swings more toward body horror in that Henry starts making weird hybrid taxidermy creatures.  For most of the book (I'd say the first 75%), there isn't much horror except for a very eerie vibe and some very vivid descriptions of Scarlett and her feelings about these creatures.  However, in the last 25% of the book, the horror really ramps up and was, in my opinion, perfectly done.  The big moment I was talking about above was also when the body horror really took off and it reminded me a lot of the body horror in the manga Uzumaki.  It was just realistic enough to really get under my skin but at least in this book, there aren't any illustrations, just the reader's own imagination.  The horror really topped off at the end and I don't want to give any spoilers but the whole time reading up to it, I was thinking "oh no, oh no, this can't be where this is going, oh no, I think this book is going there, oh no, yep, it went there" and that's really the best way I can describe it. 

This book is definitely not for everyone.  I think the cover and title will do a good job of weeding out readers who are automatically put off by the idea of taxidermy.  This is a very atmospheric, slow burn, body horror, year in the life sort of story.  The prose is beautiful, haunting, and hypnotic.  There isn't much in the way of plot other than it being a story of two people living together out in the countryside and how their lives change over the course of a year.  This is Polly Hall's debut novel and she hit it out of the park.  I'll be looking forward to reading more of her works down the road. 

Overall, I absolutely loved this book.  The writing style isn't my usual go-to, but it was extremely atmospheric and really pulled me into the story right away.  It is a slow-burn horror novel which almost no horror at the beginning but Hall brings in the big guns at the end.  I find the overall tone and story to be very similar to The Yellow Wallpaper except much more explicit and with way more body horror.  I can't recommend this book more highly - it was fantastic!

272 pages.

Thanks to NetGalley and CamCat Publishing for the ARC.  

Publication date is December 8, 2020.

The Stranger in My Bed - Karen King

 The Stranger in My Bed is a domestic psychological thriller revolving around married couple Freya and Paul.  As the result of a bad car accident, Paul has lost his memories from the past 2 years - his and Freya's entire married life.  The last thing he remembers is them coming back from their honeymoon.  Paul thinks he and Freya must have a great marriage since, as far as he remembers, they were head over heels in love with each other.  Freya, however, knows the truth of the past two years.  Living every day afraid of Paul's sudden bursts of anger and him lashing out at her for the smallest reasons. With his memories gone, Paul is the man Freya fell in love with and the question she must ask herself is: should she give him another chance?

The first thing I want to mention is a trigger warning for domestic violence.  There are multiple scenes, both in the present story as well as in flashbacks, where the domestic violence is on the page and we are experiencing it right alongside Freya.  It ranges from emotional, verbal, to physical abuse. I've never been in a domestic violence situation, but I didn't find the scenes to be overly gratuitous with the descriptions.  I didn't get the feeling that the scenes were included for shock value or anything like that.  The scenes really built up the tension in the story and were the cause of a lot of the internal tension in Freya.  From what I know from reading other real-accounts from domestic abuse survivors is that the infractions often start out small, and the perpetrator of the violence will then shower the other person with apologies, love, promises to never do it again - all of which are included in this book.  The book is split perspective mostly between Freya and Paul and the violence scenes were all from Freya's point of view so I never felt sympathy for Paul because we didn't hear his internal rationalizations for why he was doing these things to Freya.  And when Paul was apologizing to Freya, we could hear her internal thoughts about how conflicted she was about accepting his apology.  I think this book is a very powerful look at the cycle of domestic violence and how it can affect relationships of all kinds. I really wanted to mention this right at the beginning because the description of the book really doesn't do justice, I feel, to how much on the page abuse the reader will encounter.

I think the strongest part of this novel was, by far, the writing.  It was very clean and concise which is exactly how I like my thriller prose to be. The split POV was also really well handled, each character had their own voice and there were some times where I would be reading along, a new chapter would start, and I wouldn't pay attention to whose perspective we were in but I could tell within a few sentences.  I thought the additional POVs that we get sprinkled in throughout the book were also well done and they helped fill in some narrative gaps in the story in an easy and non-convoluted way.  The descriptions given of both people and places were just descriptive enough that I could get a picture in my mind without King going on and on for paragraphs at a time.  After re-reading a few passages, I think King does an excellent job of picking out key, grounding details to give to the reader and then she let's us fill in the finer details on our own. 

The biggest let down of the book for me was the thriller aspects, which was a bummer considering this was labeled a domestic psychological thriller which are normally home runs for me.  Now maybe people who haven't read as many thrillers as I have wouldn't have these issues with the book, and since all of this will be vague as to avoid spoilers, maybe take my opinions with a grain of salt.  So, first of all, it wasn't that the thriller aspects were bad or mishandled.  Quite the opposite, in fact, I will say I didn't see the final twist coming (I did call the earlier ones though) and the tension and sense of danger that Freya was in was very well crafted and kept me flipping pages as fast as I could.  However, I found the overall thriller aspects to be very surface level and if King had just turned up the dial a bit, I think this book could have been fantastic.  To start, I've read a few amnesia thrillers where the woman in the story is the one who lost her memories and she has to spend the whole book getting them back, only to find that someone she trusted the whole time was actually lying to her.  I thought that this book would be following that same sort of story line except it was the man who had lost his memory and it would be the woman's turn to get revenge or manipulate him in some way to her benefit since we know from the summary that their marriage is abusive.  This was not what happened and I was bummed about it, but, again, not everyone will have those expectations if they didn't read those previous books.  Also, there was some set up in Paul's POV for Freya to be an unreliable narrator as he questions her motives and what her true intentions are (which, if these thoughts had been paired with her actually manipulating him in revenge like I was expecting, would have been awesome).  However, the reader never sees Freya as anything other than 100% trustworthy.  We are immediately sympathetic to her situation and everyone in her life that we're introduced to supports her. She doesn't have any sort of mysterious past like we get with Paul so when Paul starts to question her motives, I basically immediately dismissed them and I never got a build up of tension trying to figure out who is right that I think the story was going for.  

The ending of this story I found really great.  Again, no spoilers, but any time the final twist in a thriller gets revealed and verbally react when I'm reading is a sign of an excellent twist. I especially liked the final twist because I had guessed that X happened, then X was dismissed in the narrative, but then the final twist was given and X turned out to be true, but not in the way I had initially thought.  There also was a good amount of resolution time after the final confrontation, which I always appreciate.  

Overall, a pretty decent surface level thriller with dual POV.  Decent twist on the amnesia-thriller trope. Writing was great, very tight, and kept the tension high throughout the book.  Trigger warning for on-page domestic violence.

295 pages.

Thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for providing the ARC.  This book will be published on November 23, 2020.

 

 

The Girls of Cemetery Road - Twyla Ellis

 This book surpassed my expectations, which is always a great thing.  It takes place in a small town in Texas on the edge of the Big Thicket.  Four childhood friends - the Sisterhood of Cemetery Road - spend their days riding bikes around the small town until one night when Libby goes missing.  She was never found and not long after Kit moves away.  Years later, Kit returns in order to fix up and sell her parent's old house.  Kit has never planned on returning to her part of the Thicket, but the Thicket has other plans.  Reconnecting with the remaining two members of the Sisterhood and brothers Colton and Jackson lead Kit on a journey that traverses the supernatural as well as the darkest parts of humanity.

I absolutely loved this book.  I found the summary to be a bit misleading in that I thought this would be more of a girl coming back to her small town and reconnecting with the people she left behind and maybe finding closure about her lost friend.  I was expecting a much more quiet book with themes about grief, friendship, and forgiveness.  I certainly was not expecting the scary supernatural elements that permeated the story.  The cover and the summary, in my opinion, do not do this story justice for just how entertaining and enthralling of a story it is.  There are consistent threats from the supernatural elements that Kit encounters and while none of them physically hurt her, they are terrifying.  The story does still cover themes of grief, friendship, and forgiveness, but with an undercurrent of the unknown forces that creep out of the Thicket at night.  There were a few scenes that had my heart racing and I had to put down the book twice when I was reading before bed because it was just a bit too much and my overactive imagination was getting away from me.  This book wasn't what I expected it to be - in the best way possible.

The relationship between Kit and the elderly Miss Maddie was my favorite relationship in the whole book.  Miss Maddie is Kit's neighbor who lives in a run down estate.  Miss Maddie is the definition of a crotchety old lady who wants nothing to do with Kit.  She sits on her front porch and threatens Kit for just walking by her house.  When Kit returns to town, she realizes that Miss Maddie doesn't have anyone looking out for her so Kit takes it upon herself to try.  Bringing Miss Maddie dinner and generally checking in on her, despite the verbal assault Miss Maddie slings, is Kit's new mission while she's fixing up her parent's house.  There were rumors back when they were kids that there was something off about Miss Maddie - or Mad Maddie McPhearson as she was called - and Kit slowly unravels the mystery of Miss Maddie.  Their relationship really highlights what kind of person Kit is and it helps Kit remember the good times of living in the town before tragedy struck.  While the two never completely get along, there is a small camaraderie that builds between the two women throughout the book.

There were two small things that irked me about the story.  The first is the hints along the way that nothing is exactly as it seems.  Now, normally with these kinds of spooky mystery books, I'm already questioning everyone's motives and actions and I think that is a standard expectation of the genre.  However, Ellis takes it one step further and will put lines like "if I had only known then" at the end of some scenes.  Which was just too heavy-handed for my liking and it broke my immersion in the reading because it made me go "okay, well I guess this will be important later, good to know" and by the third instance of this, I let go of my own guesses or suspicions on certain characters because the author didn't say anything about them so they must not be part of the mystery.  It just took some of the mystery away and took me out of the reading experience since those were really the only times the narrator had that sort of 20/20 hindsight.

The other small thing that I wasn't a fan of was how quickly the romance element moved at the end of the book.  I was a huge fan of the romance elements of the story overall, and felt that Kit and the love interest had a nice slow burn relationship building which was appropriate given all the spooky stuff happening and the fact that Kit wasn't sure if she was even staying in town or not for most of the book.  The love interest was also a very solid character who was Kit's rock for much of the story.  She leaned on him and he was always there to help her.  The romance wasn't the main story line by far so when the ending epilogue specifically focused on the romance, it didn't feel like the right tone to end the book on.

 Finally, the last part I want to mention that I really liked was how this book used To Kill A Mockingbird as a touchstone for some of the themes of the book.  The four girls read it in school and set out one summer to figure out who is their town's Boo Radley.  The characters call back to this a few times throughout the story and I think it was interesting to see the parallels between the stories.  The general mood and tone of the stories are somewhat similar with their small town southern charm and slower pace of life.  The theme of 'outsiders' is strong in this book and we see that theme explored from multiple perspectives which I found really interesting.  I find a lot of time classic novels are referenced in modern books but I haven't read many classics so I don't usually care about the references to them that much. But To Kill A Mockingbird had a big impact on me when we read it in 9th grade English class so it really deepened my reading experience of The Girls of Cemetery Road.

 

 

A fantastic book about grief, friendship, forgiveness, and outsiders.  Some very scary scenes that got my heart racing.  An exploration on the supernatural as well as the evils that lurk closer to home. Highly recommend!

344 pages.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing the ARC.  This book was published on August 25, 2020.